


The Five Times Michael was in the Bathroom & The One Time Jeremy was With Him

by laugh_a_latte



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: AND!, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Depressed Michael, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Makeup, Panic Attacks, Post-Squip, Suicidal Thoughts, boyf riends - Freeform, during squip, prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 02:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19308562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laugh_a_latte/pseuds/laugh_a_latte
Summary: Need I say more?





	1. Michael in the Bathroom by the Theatre

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you ALL for your incredible prompts on my last post. I'm so excited to get to work on these, especially after last night's sad news. So in the spirit, here's some angst. Let's kick off this prompt train (and try not to think of BMC closing) with a prompt from awkwardspeech:
> 
> Prompt: The five times Michael was in the bathroom, and the one time Jeremy was with him.
> 
> This will definitely be a multi-part fic. I'll update as I write, of course, and as I work on other prompts!
> 
> Here goes!

Everyone has panic attacks in bathrooms. This is just a fact of life. Or, at least of Michael’s.

Michael’s had countless. He remembers a few months back in freshman year where it’d be once a week, at least. The bathrooms near the theatre were single room bathrooms, so he always had complete privacy. A quick breakdown during lunch or study hall, splash some water on his face, and he’d be good to go.

So he’s no stranger to having panic attacks in bathrooms. But after Jake's Halloween party . . . It feels different.

The bathroom is Michael’s safe spot. He could lock the door, lock the world on the other side, away from him, out of his bathroom. His sanctuary. With that deadbolt bolted, he could feel the weight lift of all his shoulders, easing him back into an hazy kind of calm.

But it’s November first. And Michael’s shut himself in the theatre bathroom. And this time, it’s none of those things.

Michael locks the door, and the sliding metal click goes right down his spine. He shivers with the sharp sound, blinking rapidly at the brass sliding lock. Now, he’d normally sit against the wall or sink and breathe his way out of a panic attack, or maybe ride it out in freedom, but. He can’t. Something else is there, now. And he can’t do that.

Michael drops his hand from the lock and turns around.

This isn’t right.

Michael feels his right hand open and close, clutching at nothing, but he can’t drop the tension. He moves it to his chest. It wrings it’s way into the front of his hoodie. He looks into the mirror.

He shakes his head at the person watching him, and looks away.

This can’t be right. This bathroom is his sanctuary. His safe space. His area to lock the world away. It has to be, because right now Michael can’t go anywhere else.

It’s his safe spot.

Or maybe it was.

The memories from last night rush back in technicolor.

Michael swallows, blinking rapidly.

It’s not safe here anymore. It’s actually quite dangerous, because this time instead of locking the world outside, he locked it inside, with him. And he’s trapped himself with it. And he can feel it pressing in on all sides of him. Constricting his chest, pushing the air out of him before he can take a full breath.

Michael turns on his heel to get out of this bathroom, this cell, this awful, heinous place.

It’s pressing, pressing, suffocating, and Michael can’t make it to the door. He feels his knees hit the floor, hard. His left hand hits the ground with a slap in front of him and his other clutches his hoodie so hard he can feel his nails dig at his palms through the fabric.

Because nothing is right anymore. Jeremy hates him. Jeremy hates him so much. He’s a loser, and his wrist stings, and he’s so, so stupid for thinking Jeremy might listen to him last night.

To wait in a bathroom, in a hot stuffy costume, for hours.

Rehearsing what he was going to say, an epic monologue, and oh, how Jeremy would understand and apologize.

Michael hears an odd, high pitched noise from somewhere outside of him, but he can’t focus on that, because how couldn’t he have realized?

Because, of course Jeremy hates him. He’s Michael Mell - stupid and pathetic and always, ever wrong. And the quantum computer in Jeremy’s brain finally let him see that. And Michael thought he could fix it? How stupid.

Stupid, pathetic, idiot.

And he feels his hoodie sleeve ride up against his wrist as his arms drop, and the fabric is rough and his wrist stings still from last night, and the sudden pain makes Michael’s breath hitch even further, and God. Stupid, pathetic, loser.

And these thoughts play over and over, on shuffle and repeat as Michael's reality falls apart within the walls of this small bathroom, tucked away in the corner near the theatre.

Michael's breath catches in his throat and he coughs into the ground. Somehow his face ended up pressed against it. The high pitched noise stops, and Michael realizes after he coughs that it was coming from his throat, this animalistic shriek, like a whining dog, and he doesn’t think people are supposed to make that sound, because now his throat hurts, but he can’t stop. And the floor is covered in spit and tears, and he can feel it on his nose and forehead pressed into the floor.

Michael can feel his breath bouncing off the floor and back onto his face, hot and quick, and his throat is still make weird noises out of his control.

He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to stop feeling.

Anything to stop feeling.

But he can’t.

Slowly, slowly, as long as he focuses on the feeling of his spit and tears drying on his skin and his breath on his face, his throat loosens, and the sound diminishes. His breath slowly and bumpily returns to normal, only hiccuping if he lets his focus slip back to Jeremy or last night or anything that isn’t his spit on the ground.

Michael hears the warning bell go off somewhere far away. Lunch is over.

Michael pulls away from the floor and sits back, hugging his knees to his chest. Squinting his eyes shut tight against this new, bright, painful light. He feels the blood rush around in his head, and that doesn’t feel good at all, and his throat is scratchy, parched, eyes swollen. Soon, he hears the sounds of students flooding into the halls, and he takes that as his cue to hurry up.

Michael pushes himself off the ground, steadying himself on the sink. He runs the cold water, cupping it into his hands, then bends over the sink to get as much of it on his face as possible. After a few moments, he looks up into the mirror.

The water helped a little. He still looks like shit. Red eyes and circles and puffy lids, but now it could be allergies. Or he could be high. No one will know.

Michael dries his face off with a cheap, scratchy paper towel, picks up his backpack, throws on his headphones and hood.

He braces himself against the door, closing his eyes, waiting for it to hit him.

But, nothing comes. It looks like Michael got his wish.

He turns the handle.

He feels completely numb.


	2. Michael in the Bathroom with Mascara

Michael’s hand won’t stop shaking. He looks at it, confused. Yes, his heart is beating very fast. Sure, he’s really nervous for no discernible reason. But, this doesn’t make any sense. His hand shouldn’t be shaking.

He rolls the plastic tube between his pointer finger and thumb, feeling the smooth surface, a little slippery with sweat. Then he looks back at the mirror.

This all started with looking in a mirror.

Earlier that afternoon. Michael fell into the driver’s seat of his car and pulled the door shut with a satisfying slam. In an instant, the honking horns and yelling students and barking dogs were muffled. Silence. And Michael allowed himself, for a moment, to sit back. To relax as best he could, close his eyes, and breathe.

He felt on the verge of tears all day, and that needed to stop because it was just fucking up his throat. He sniffs and opens his eyes, staring at the fuzzy ceiling of his car. He watches one little fuzzy sway back and forth gently, as if there was slight breeze. Michael can almost feel how puffy the circles beneath his eyes have become in the day, and it's gross.

Michael flips open the little overhead mirror to check and see how dead he really looks inside. He hasn’t slept really much at all since Halloween night, and it's starting to show rather badly.

Michael frowns at the gross reflection, then flips the mirror back up. This definitely wouldn’t do.

Michael sniffs again and throws the car into reverse.

Michael slinks into the drugstore with the intention to purchase one tube of concealer. A quick Google search lists that as the solution for dark circles.

So Michael finds a concealer that looks to be about his skin tone. And really, he means to leave after that, but keeps getting stopped short.

Because Michael's never given any attention to the makeup section, but now it's laid before him, and there is a lot. There is so much, and it all looks so nice. And without warning, Michael gets this flash of an image in his mind, a different version of him. And he gets this flutter in his chest.

And then, as if in a trance, he finds himself grabbing an eye shadow palette. Then a lipstick. Then eyeliner and mascara and some other things that look cool and sparkly, even though he isn't one hundred percent on what they even do. Then, before his moms get home from work, he raids their bathroom and finds some products there, too.

And now, Michael is standing in his house’s rarely used half bathroom with the tube of concealer open. The light is bright and painful against his eyes. His body is telling him he should be long asleep right now, but Michael blinks back the tiredness and squints against the light. He can deal. 

And now he's breaking out of that weird trance and taking in everything spread out on the counter in front of him, wondering what the fuck. Because he’s not quite sure why he bought all of this. This makeup. Because makeup is supposed to be a girl thing, and he’s not a girl.

But he is gay. And now also confused. And he needs to take a moment to make sure that this weird want to put on a face of makeup is his own idea, and not because he’s gay. As if Gay was a little person on his shoulder telling him how to act. And Michael doesn't want to listen to a voice that isn't truly his, because sometimes people at school call him sissy or girly or faggot or fairy any number of things that make Michael's chest hurt. And maybe by putting on makeup it’ll prove them right. Because he’s gay and wants to wear makeup, and those are two very bad things.

Michael shakes his head. No, no that’s not right. They’re _not_ bad. People at school just say they’re bad. Michael’s _not_ bad for being gay. He knows that. And wanting to wear makeup isn’t bad, right? Because it feels pretty bad right now. Very wrong and very, very bad.

And Michael chews at the inside of his cheek and his eyebrows knot together and he feels his heartbeat increase ever so, and he has to remind himself that it only feels bad because the people at school would make him feel bad if they knew. But he’s not bad, right? They don't need to know, they won't. He’s not broken, he’s not stupid, or weird, right?

Well, no, he _is_ weird, but he’s the good weird, isn’t he? The video game, retro stoner weird. Not the gay boy who has this weird want to wear makeup weird. But does that mean that’s the bad weird? That shouldn't be a bad weird. Why does it feel like such a bad weird?

Fuck.

Michael just doesn’t want to be a stereotype is all. It’s only . . . Well, the makeup looked so pretty, and it’s not his fault he also happens to be gay while thinking it might be nice to look pretty. It's _not._ God, with long eyelashes and bright lips and colorful eyes. And Michael’s never been pretty, or handsome, or anything really.

Michael's eyes start blinking rapidly at nothing.

He’s never been anything.

And Michael stares at the mirror. And stares at nothing.

Because he is nothing. Nothing without Jeremy. He’s this empty shell of a person, who has never been anything. Never pretty or handsome or beautiful or worth anything.

Because he had Jeremy, and with Jeremy, none of it mattered. He didn't have to be anything. Jeremy was all he needed.

But Jeremy doesn’t need him anymore.

And Michael doesn’t know who he is anymore.

Michael watches the tears roll down this person in the mirror’s face, and has this awful thought. It would be so easy. This bathroom has a lot of old prescriptions in the cupboard, behind that mirror. It’s all right there, ready and waiting for him.

The sharp sound of hard plastic hitting marble startles Michael back into focus, and he sees himself suddenly in the mirror. Michael swallows and looks away, using the back of his hands to wipe away the tears.

Michael stares hard at the concealer applicator staining the sink. A little product runs into a stray water droplet, and the two merge and fall into the drain, leaving a streak on the white marble. And he wonders.

Maybe Michael doesn’t know who he is. Maybe he is nothing - he sure feels like it. But by being nothing, maybe Michael gets to choose who he is from here. From nothing you can create anything, right? And now he can choose to be who ever he wants. _He_ gets to choose. Not a little person on his shoulder, or the people at school who etch words into his locker. Or even Jeremy.

Him.

He can be anything he wants without Jeremy.

Michael picks up the plastic applicator from the sink and dips it back into the tube.

He looks back into the mirror. At his wet, brown eyes and dark circles and chubby cheeks and blotchy, acne covered skin and crooked nose and uneven, bushy brows.

Michael wants to be something else.

He swipes the concealer under his eyes, and breathes.


	3. Michael in the Bathroom with his Laptop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you all thought this was abandoned! I almost thought so, too! But, but here we are!  
> This is gonna go in a vastly different direction that I originally intended, so I hope you all enjoy the ride.

So the first time wasn't a success, to say the least.

First, Michael did not get the right shade of anything.

Second, his eye still stings from getting eyeliner and mascara and, somehow, lipstick in it.

Third, well. Michael doesn't know how to do makeup.

At least he figured out the concealer part. So, now he puts that on in the morning and goes to school, where he thinks a lot about what he did in the bathroom that night and how it was making him feel and all the thinking he did there, then he realizes he's thinking about thinking and stops doing that because it makes him anxious, and he starts all over. And every time he starts over, he sees that initial image he had in the drug store, where he was beautiful by himself. Entirely separate from Jeremy.

And Michael still doesn't know how to feel about that.

Because thinking about being a boy who wears makeup in the middle of the night in that rarely-used bathroom feels completely different from thinking about it while sitting in Spanish class at 2pm.

In Spanish class at 2pm, it definitely feels like a horrible, stupid idea, and he wonders if anyone is noticing that he’s wearing concealer, and how wrong and unnatural and weird it is, and he wishes he was home so he could take it off be nothing again.

It just feels so obvious and heavy on him, and other people have to be noticing and making fun of him for it. But he only gets made fun of for the usual things and not the makeup things, so maybe no one is noticing, and he’s just being dramatic.

And after he gets over the initial newness of it, well. He starts liking it a lot. That no one can see those dark circles. And it starts not being enough, because they can still see his bushy eyebrows and uneven skin and acne.

And that image flashes through Michael's brain again.

And it starts becoming one of the only things he can think about.

And that pep talk he gave himself that first night starts feeling ridiculous, the more he thinks about it in the middle of the day, surrounded by the students at school, suffocated by them, without a single one to talk to.

He wonders what Jeremy would tell him, if he could talk to him and ask him if he was weird for wanting to wear makeup, but at the same time, he’s so scared of the answer—of what Jeremy might say to the only thing Michael’s liked uniquely outside of their friendship—that he bitterly thinks that maybe it’s better that Jeremy hates him now.

And in a weird way, outside of those thoughts of what Jeremy might say, it's such a relief. So much so that he could almost laugh. Because now he’s so busy thinking and wondering and worrying about this other thing that Jeremy only really crosses his mind when he sees him ignoring him in the hall, or when he looks at the word on the back of his backpack, or when one of their favorite songs comes on, which is a definite improvement from before, when he could barely make it to his car at the end of the day without crying.

But in another way, it's another weight, because he's realizing this is something he actually wants to try, actually wants to practice and test out, and that scares him.

Without Jeremy he's nothing. Except, if he actually gives into this weird, new part of himself, does that mean that without Jeremy he's—well. Well what?

He's _this._ And he doesn’t know what this is or what it means.

And Michael doesn't want to know. Michael just wants to be, well. Something. Something good. Something that’s his and his alone. Something beautiful, even, if he's allowed to use that word to describe himself.

And as he stands here, back in his upstairs bathroom late at night, where those thoughts don’t feel so wrong as they do during the day, he definitely doesn't think he can use that word to describe any part of him.

Because all he sees as he stares into this mirror is a chubby, pathetic looking boy who is anything but beautiful.

Michael looks away from his reflection, down to the counter in front of him.

He went back today and got different shades of everything, awkwardly refusing when the counter lady asked him if he needed any help while he was holding three different tubes of foundation to his arm.

He thinks he did better with shade-matching this time. And this time, he hopes to actually do something productive.

To help, he has his laptop on the counter.

And he's been thinking about this all day. What he's going to type into YouTube on this incognito window. And now the moment is here, and he’s actually really excited.

And so, with a hesitant excitement he’s trying not to let himself feel, Michael types it into YouTube.

_makeup tutorial_

He hits enter.

And, oh. Oh Man.

There’s a _lot._

Michael scrolls, and scrolls some more, and wow.

Maybe he should have done more research, because he has no idea which one to pick, because they’re all such different looks, and all these girls are gorgeous, and he’s definitely not a girl, he’s a _boy_ , and boys don’t wear makeup, and now he feels so embarrassed and so stupid, and maybe this was a bad idea, and look at all this money he’s wasted doing this ridiculous thing, and—

—and then he sees a video. And his breath catches, because that’s not a girl in the thumbnail.

And Michael’s breath slows down, because he didn’t know boys could do that.

And he looks at his huge subscriber count, and the hundreds and thousands of likes on the video.

And it just doesn’t seem possible.

He just didn’t know.

And suddenly all those scary thoughts, all that shame, and guilt, and fear that he’s not allowed to be interested in this kind of thing as a gay boy, start to ease up a little.

Michael breathes, and clicks the video.

 

* * *

 

Michael’s face is half a foot away from the mirror.

His back started hurting an hour ago, and Michael just said screw it, climbing up on the counter and sitting on top of the sink, knocking a few things over in the process. He's surrounded by dirty makeup brushes and streaks of black mascara on the white marble and countless open products, strewn around the counter. The fake marble is cool against his legs, and he’s glad he’s only wearing boxers and a hoodie because he’d probably slip right off if he was wearing pants.

His legs are starting to cramp up a bit, though, but he’s hardly noticing, because he can’t stop looking at himself in the mirror.

He didn’t have everything the boy in the video had, and it took him much, much, _much_ longer to do every step, and it still doesn’t look as good, but Michael’s done it.

And he can’t look away.

His skin, for the first time ever, looks smooth. Like really just _wow_. There’s no scars or spots or redness, save for the pink blush that took him three tries to get right on his cheek bones, right underneath the shiny highlighter that adds a life to his face he hasn't seen in a long time.

And his _face._ His face looks like it has an actual shape, his cheekbones full with that blush, and his cheeks made more interesting with contour, which he still doesn’t think quite matches his complexion, but it’s good enough for him.

The red lipstick scared him more than he'd like to admit, so he instead used a softer pink-y shade. He didn’t know lip liner was a thing he was supposed to have, but he thinks the lipstick by itself is more than fine enough.

And his eyes.

They’re still tender from getting the eyeliner wrong so many times, but he finally got something of an even line on each one, and the shadow is dark and sparkly and makes his dull, brown eyes pop more than he ever could have thought possible.

Michael can’t stop looking.

He looks so . . .

The phone alarm blares loudly next to him, causing him to almost fall off the counter.

He catches himself on the faucet, his heart pounding against his chest. He scrambles for his phone to turn the alarm off, seeing that it’s time to get up for school.

And that can’t be right. There’s no way he’s been here this long.

But as he watches the minute tick over, he feels that shift happen. From the safe, non reality of night, over to the harsh, unrelenting day.

And Michael doesn’t really want to go to school because there’s no way he can go with this makeup on, but he doesn’t want to take it off yet because he still can’t believe that’s him. That he can look so—

Oh God.

Michael looks back at the mirror.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

He looks away, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get it all _off_ him, searching around for the makeup wipes he bought. He finds them in a plastic bag on the floor behind him, then rips the packaging off and roughly wipes all of his work away, watching everything he made for himself disappear, every swipe reminding him that he’s not pretty, that he’s still a boy, that maybe only some boys can wear makeup, like the boy in the video, and he’s definitely not one of them, because this is starting to feel so wrong again as the light shifts around him, and he has to go to school.

And because he stayed up all night, the circles under his eyes are worse. And now every imperfection on his face sticks out, worse. And every single one of those daylight thoughts return, that much worse.

And he only wishes, as he finishes scrubbing off his mascara, unable to tell if his eyes are watering because of all the scrubbing or because he's tired or for a different reason, that he could go back to where everything wasn’t worse, where he didn’t feel awful for wanting to wear makeup, where he didn't even want to wear it in the _first_ place, and he could just hide everything wrong with him behind his friendship with Jeremy.

But he can’t.

All he can do is throw his makeup wipe away, and go back to school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments on the last chapter were so sweet, despite me taking forever to update! Thank you, all! <3
> 
> Hope you all enjoy this take I'm going with? It's different from what I usually do, and I don't know where this inspiration is coming from, but I'm gonna just roll with it! Thanks for reading, hope I can update this much quicker than last time!


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